This is a fascinating little number I feel. Apple takes 71% of all the current profits being made in the smartphone industry.
Apple collects 71% of the world's smartphone profits, analysts reckon; Even though Samsung ships the most phones, it takes 37%; Taiwan's HTC gets 1%. (That total exceeds 100% because it's offset by losses at Nokia, BlackBerry-maker RIM, Motorola, Sony, LG and others.)
It's an entirely incorrect number of course, unless we're very careful about the parameters we're using. The people who mine and process the tantalum to make the capacitors are making profits and they're making profits from smartphones' demand for capacitors. And the people who make the screens and even more the people who provide the airtime which make the phones work.
But if we exclude all of that and look just at who is making a profit from selling the hardware and software for smartphones: well, no, even that's not true. For Microsoft is making a hefty whack out of license fees on Android systems for example. Some say as much as $1 billion a year for work they did over a decade ago. Which isn't bad money really.
But if we restrict ourselves just to hardware then it is true. And it shows quite how much Apple is outshining the competition. They're selling many fewer phones than the competition but they're making the lion's share of all the profits. And business is indeed about making a profit, not making a sale.
